


14x08 Coda - Pursuit of Happiness

by FunnyWings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 14.08 CODA, 14x08 coda, Episode: s14e08 Byzantium, Fix It Fic, M/M, but its fine I swear, the empty makes good on its promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 19:12:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16918734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunnyWings/pseuds/FunnyWings
Summary: Cas waits for the SHADOW to come and take him.Excerpt:Cas forgets. Not completely, not entirely, but for long stretches at a time he forgets. Dean and Sam are dead and buried before it occurs to him it should have happened by now. Jack is reunited in heaven with Kelly before he wonders what exactly the SHADOW is waiting for.He dies himself, still wondering.“Whose heaven is this?” Cas asks, knowing his instincts can’t be true.“Yours,” says Dean.





	14x08 Coda - Pursuit of Happiness

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during after life. Just so we're clear.

"Tell me what you know about dreams. Tell me what you know about night terrors, nothing."

********************************************

Cas is happy and the SHADOW doesn’t come for him. He sometimes thinks he can feel tiny hooks at the edges of his being, ever ready to pull him from this plane of existence. Ready to put him to sleep indefinitely. Still, Cas is happy, and he doesn’t know why. He should be afraid, but he doesn’t know how anymore.

Jack is alive and his family is reunited and the threat of the SHADOW is ever present. It fades to the background because it has to. Michael distracts, and people die, and life goes on. Jack looks at him sometimes when he laughs, a moment of fear at the back of his eyes, but Cas doesn’t stop laughing. If he’s living on borrowed time, he’s going to make the most of it.

The SHADOW thinks this is torture. It’s not. It’s a gift. Who is Castiel to pass off another minute, another second with his family? Another afternoon quietly reading in the library with Sam, or annoying Bobby by trading knitting tips with Mary, or watching old movies with Dean? Castiel has learned in his time on earth to be grateful for the small moments. They’re all that matter in the end.

They hunt and live, and the world almost ends a time or two and still the SHADOW does not come for him. Jack reveals his secret, and there is the requisite yelling, and moving on, and still nothing.

So Cas forgets. Not completely, not entirely, but for long stretches at a time he forgets. Dean and Sam are dead and buried before it occurs to him it should have happened by now. Jack is reunited in heaven with Kelly before he wonders what exactly the SHADOW is waiting for.  
He dies himself, still wondering.

Heaven is not perfect. It is not meant to keep you happy, only content. Cas is not supposed to belong there, at least not in this capacity. He’s not supposed to see it the way a human sees it. There’s no conception of the framework, or the machinations behind the illusions. Heaven exists to fool humans and he is not human, and yet-

“It took you a long time.”

Cas turns. It’s something of a shock to see his family standing there. Dean, Sam, Jack, and Kelly. Mary and Bobby. Rowena, too, funnily enough.

“Whose heaven is this?” Cas asks, knowing his instincts can’t be true. Dean grins at him. He looks twenty nine again, something that surprises Cas deeply. Sam’s favored appearance seems to be somewhere in his sixties. Jack is young, but that doesn’t surprise Cas. Kelly remembers him as young, it makes sense that is the image Jack would keep, even if he died much older…

“Yours,” says Dean after a moment. “I hope you don’t mind all the gate crashers. Billie gave us a head’s up you were on your way in and no one wanted to miss seeing you get here.”

“It’s good to see you, Cas,” Sam says smiling. “It wasn’t the same without you.”

Cas had visited in the intervening years. Or at least he’d tried. Naomi wasn’t always accommodating, and Cas didn’t always know which gates she had left open and which ones she had closed to confuse him. Once Jack had died, Naomi had perfected her method of keeping him out of heaven unless he was willing or able to agree to whatever task she wanted of him. Rationing out his visits with his family had allowed her to ask much of him in the last few decades. The tasks were usually dangerous, and the evidence would suggest his most recent task had proved fatal.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” Cas says. Dean stops grinning, sudden vulnerability crossing his face. Cas didn’t understand, nor did he understand the way Sam is frowning at him like he just said something awful. “In Heaven, I’m not supposed to-“

Dean’s face relaxes.

“Why look a gift horse in the mouth?” says Dean. “Don’t you get it, Cas? This is… You’re home.”

There’s something Dean’s not saying, and Cas doesn’t know what to do with it. He looks to Sam, who just sighs and subtly gestures for Cas to look around him. Cas does so.

At first he’s not sure what he’s seeing. They’re in Bobby’s house, but not Bobby standing next to Mary, the Bobby of their world who Cas now notices is sitting in his chair sipping on whiskey. Except this Bobby isn’t real, he’s just a memory.

“Bobby couldn’t make it,” Dean explains before Cas could say anything. “He pissed off Naomi, and she’s keeping him on lock down for a while. He’ll say hi when he gets the chance.”

“I see,” Cas says. But he doesn’t. Not yet. Instead he sees his memory of original Bobby sigh and roll his eyes.

“Well if you two are going to spend all night sulking,” he says, pushing himself out of his chair and leaving the room. This is when Cas remembers. It was the Apocalypse. Cas was falling, Sam had decided to say yes to Lucifer in an attempt to trap him in the cage, Dean had reluctantly agreed, and in the mean time they were all just waiting. Waiting for it all to start, and for it all to end.

Dean had nursed a few more drinks that night. He’d been mean to Cas then in a way he wasn’t anymore. Cas had been too lost in a self-pitying stupor to notice Dean’s increasingly cutting comments. It wasn’t long before Dean had seemed to realize what he’d been doing, and stopped. Then he’d just looked at Cas and finally he’d suggested they get their mind off of everything for a while.

Dean had hummed and hawed over Bobby’s DVD selection and then made Cas watch Casablanca, because “it’s a classic, okay?”

Cas wasn’t sure he would have labeled it one of his happiest memories at the time, but in retrospect he’d viewed it with fondness. Remembered the way Dean had fallen asleep halfway through, and his features had softened, and he’d woken up just in time for Cas to wonder why the movie didn’t have a happy ending, something he’d been certain humans were rather fond of.

Dean had looked at him for a long time afterwards. Then he had shrugged.

“Sometimes things don’t work out,” he’d said then. “They can’t. People realize it’s just not how shit is going to go down, and that’s okay. Other stuff wins out. They knew how they felt. That was enough.”  
There is no memory of Dean to play this out. Cas doesn’t understand. He looks at Dean again, and he wants to get it but Dean isn’t saying a word. Mary and Bobby exchange glances awkwardly and Sam looks like he’s about to burst a blood vessel.

Jack and Kelly’s faces are expectant and wary and Cas doesn’t understand that either. It’s as though they’re all in on a secret that Castiel is supposed to know, too.

Jack’s the one who says it. Of course he is.

“It’s Dean’s, too,” he explains, and everything clicks into place. “This place.”

“Oh,” says Cas. And then it really hits him. The reason Dean isn’t there in memory is because this place isn’t Cas’ alone. It’s theirs, it’s shared. “Oh.”

“Yeah, uh,” says Dean, as though he’s struggling to find the words. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

Cas doesn’t say anything. Dean starts to look very nervous.

“So did you see Anubis on the way up? He’s decent for a god. I mean, he could get it-“

“Seriously, Dean?” Sam mutters.

“Fuck, what I’m trying to say is-“

“It’s the same for me,” Cas says. Because his entire worldview has shifted about two inches to the left and three degrees counter clockwise, and it’s the first thing he can think to say. “I mean, not about Anubis. He’s irrelevant, but about-“

“Yeah?” Dean asks. As if it isn’t obvious. As if this sort of thing would even happen if Cas didn’t feel the same way, a hundredfold and counting. As if he wasn’t now looking back at a life lived and wanting more, and wanting more now, too, and being buried under the sheer immensity of it all. And underlying every second of it: unthought of happiness. “Well, I got to tell you that’s good to hear. Because I’m not sure the angels are big on settling separation disputes, and the place isn’t big enough to cut in half anyway, so-“

Dean’s lips are soft. That’s the last thing Castiel thinks before he thinks of nothing at all.

Castiel forgot, but the SHADOW remembered. Patience means nothing to eternity, and Cas is aware of his doom in just enough time for his pain to taste sweet. This whole saga, this series of catastrophes and triumphs, it all started with revenge. And it would end with it too, a sad little footnote on an epic years in the making. Or so Cas might have thought if he were not sleeping.

But Billie can be quiet. She knows the ins and outs of dimensions like she knows her own demise will happen on a Thursday at the hands of a small blond haired girl trying to save her father from dying of starvation. She’s one of Jack’s descendants, though very distant. Powerful, of course, too much for someone so young. It’s a long way off and Billie has never feared death. Another will rise to take her place, and so it goes.

For now she is one with the blackness and blankness that makes up the Empty. Her presence here is familiar, like the humming of a lullaby. The SHADOW sleeps on, peaceful. Content. Happy. They have won.

They will never notice one soul, removed with precision from the whole. Cut from body and grace and scar tissue, and not entirely intact. It is the only part of him that can be saved without notice, but it’s enough.

She doesn’t stay to watch the reunion, or listen to the Winchesters thank yous. They knew their end of the bargain to ensure Castiel’s safety from the SHADOW, and that was to leave the natural order of things alone for the foreseeable future. Instead, she goes to a patch of heaven she’s grown familiar with, home to an advisor she finds invaluable. One of the few souls she doesn’t find unbearable.

“Thank you for the favor, love,” he says. She ignores the endearment. Mostly.

“I don’t need an angry horde of dead Winchesters poking at the interdimensional glue that holds the multiverse together. The Empty sleeps, and everyone wins,” she says. He raises an eyebrow. “And you did say you would owe me a favor.”

Crowley just smiles. He’d always been good at making deals.

“And he’s happy?”

“Maybe someday you’ll care less what Dean Winchester thinks and feels,” she says. Crowley raises an eyebrow. “Yes. He was thrilled. You knew he would be.”

“And that settles that, I suppose,” he says. He sounds almost disappointed, like he was hoping in his heart of hearts there would still be something missing from Dean’s heaven. That there would be a shadow of doubt across everything, a longing glance spared over his shoulder for a certain demon.

“I could tell him you died human. That the spell to close the rift cured you. That you passed Anubis’ final test,” Billie offers. Crowley shakes his head. In his heaven, he holds his son for the first time. His surroundings transform. He sits beside the memory of Dean at a bar. Billie feels sorry for him. “Or at least your mother.”

“Don’t you dare,” he growls. Billie waits, and Crowley sighs. “And thank you. For doing that. I know they don’t aways seem worth the bloody trouble but-”

“A favor,” Billie says firmly in reply. Crowley can do dirty work she can’t. He’d do it anyway, even without this promise, but she doesn’t mention that. She had watched Crowley’s ascent through hell with a certain amount of admiration, and she felt a fondness for him having worked his way up the ladder just as she had. Ambition and hunger, and a desire to do things right in a way their predecessors couldn’t. This certain fondness was returned, at least partially, if unspoken. If he wanted to torture himself over an ex, who was she to stop him?

Billie disperses the memories and sits with Crowley. And she tells him about the end.

Heaven isn’t perfect, and it isn’t eternal. Not really. But what it is is the next best thing. Happiness, that can be crystallized, dusted off, experienced like new again and again. Waning and fading, and made fresh even in moments of agony. Not without end, but in its own way endless.

And in the end, it is memories. Always memories. The closest thing to a perfect reward God could imagine.

But with Light, there is always Darkness. How easy to forget. It’s ingrained, deep, a consequence of the universe’s very inception. Creation itself casted the SHADOW. Pleasantly tired, they are silent and dragged in the wake of memory, gently rocking to the tune of stolen dreams.

For now.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you liked!


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